


Unless the Moon Falls Tonight

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, aka proposal fic, season 4 spec, souffle spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 09:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5000284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 4 spec. Another pass at the "souffle spoilers."</p><p>"He can’t believe they’re finally here, and at the same time, he can’t believe it took them this long. It’s his fault, really, he should have pulled the trigger a long time ago, before everything went to hell."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unless the Moon Falls Tonight

_A/N: Olicity s4 spec ficlet. Based, crazily-enough, on[this Fitzsimmons gifset](http://theshipsfirstmate.tumblr.com/post/131158174459) from last night’s S.H.I.E.L.D. episode (though you don’t have to get that to get this). So, S.H.I.E.L.D. spoilers, if you click that, and I guess some Arrow spec/spoilers too? Though it’s mostly spec. Some mention of kidnapping and torture, but I swear, it’s fluffier than it sounds. (This is why I can’t have nice things.)_

_Title from[“Driving With the Brakes On”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mj8KDpoZnQ) by Del Amitri._

**Unless the Moon Falls Tonight**

He almost doesn’t believe it.

Holding her hand, riding in the car, even once they’re in the restaurant, surrounded by the warm glow of candlelight and the smell of garlic and basil, he still struggles.

He can’t believe they’re finally here, and at the same time, he can’t believe it took them this long. It’s his fault, really, he should have pulled the trigger a long time ago, before everything went to hell.

The hostess has them wait at at her station to be seated, which he thinks is strange, until he sees a man he now knows to be the manager cross the restaurant to greet them.

“Mr. Queen,” the man nods with a quirk of his eyebrow as he shakes his hand. “So good to finally see you.”

“It’s good to be here,” Oliver replies, pursing his lips and pointedly ignoring the confused look Felicity gives them both. He doesn’t say “finally.” Nothing about this is final.

They’re seated at the restaurant’s most private table, a little circular booth in one of the back corners and he winces as she slides in gingerly. Most of the bruises have faded and if it wasn’t for the cast on her left wrist – which she hates, because it slows down her typing – you might never guess she’s been through any kind of ordeal at all, let alone the hell of the last month.

The manager hands Felicity her wine list first, then approaches Oliver on the other side. When he reaches out to take the small portfolio, the man holds on a little too long, too tightly, and his thumb taps once at the name of a vintage on the bottom of the list. The meaning is clear. But Oliver just shakes his head.

“They’ve got one for me in the back.”

When the manager pauses for just a second, Oliver interrupts him before the displeased frown even has a chance to fully form.

“You can charge me that” – he motions to the wine the man had been suggesting – “just to cork it.”

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but her, sitting next to him, the fingers of her right hand laced through his left. But his knee won’t stop jiggling and he knows she can tell something’s up.

She waits until the manager leaves, taking the wine lists with him with a satisfied smile, before she asks. “Oliver? What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out with an unamused laugh. “I wanted to wait until after we ate, but I just can’t…”

“What, are you afraid the building’s gonna blow up?”

He sputters at her misguided attempt to lighten the mood, not because it’s a painful memory, but because it’s a memory at all. She’s been…cloudy since she came back to him, after a week in the hospital where she was mostly unconscious and then mostly asleep. It’s the absolute worst part of it for her, someone who’s used to being razor sharp and five steps ahead of everyone around her.

He can’t pick a worst part, there’s too much to sort through. When it gets overwhelming, all he can focus on is the best part, when he had hoisted her in his arms to carry her out of the makeshift dungeon, his name spilling weakly from her lips, letting him know she was still alive, still with him.

She squeezes his hand lightly, drawing him out of the memories, and he can tell by her clouded gaze that she knows exactly where he went. He presses on.

“Do you remember our last night in Ivy Town?”

“You made souffles.” She smiles at him, and the relaxed breath he lets out at another recollection catches in his throat when he sees the returned sparkle in her eyes.

“Yeah.”

“Then Thea and Laurel crashed the party.”

“I had a whole plan,” he blurts out, almost ignoring her in favor of getting this out as quickly as possible. “I had my mother’s ring and a speech and I can’t…”

He remembers returning to the loft that first night, after they had exhausted every possible option – and themselves – in the initial panic after she had been taken. Laurel and Thea had warned him not to go, but he had to see for himself, the place where they took her, the place where someone else he loved had been ripped away from him.

The place had been ransacked, he was ready for that. He has a hazy half-memory of almost choking out a careless cop who remarked that it looked like “the girl put up a pretty good fight.” What he isn’t ready for is the upturned coffee table, the broken bowl and scattered glass beads that litter the floor, so close to the spot he had found Thea last year. He goes through the motions mechanically, packing one bag of clothes. He doesn’t touch the mess, and when he shuts the door behind him, he knows he’ll never go back.

“Oliver?” Felicity’s voice is like a balm that soothes him, the buoy that pulls him back to the surface. But it also sounds shaky, almost nervous. “Will you please just ask me?”

When he widens his eyes at her in surprise, she gives him an innocent little shrug. “I knew,” she admits. “I think…I think I’ve known since Ivy Town.”

He’s not upset, not angry or disappointed that his cover’s been blown. The only thing that’s upsetting is that they could have been here months ago, that she could have been wearing his ring, hell, she could have been his wife by now.

“I thought about it, you know,” she tells him, voice going soft. “When I was gone, when he…I thought about how you might have…”

He cuts her off the best way he knows how, saving them both from those memories with a soft press of his lips to hers.

“Oliver…” she whispers his name when they pull back, but he can’t wait, not one more second. He’s wasted enough of his life already.

“Marry me.”

She nods, with a smile that’s warmer and brighter than the candles that frame her face with their glow. In all the times he’s pictured this moment, he was never sure if she’d get teary or not, and now he realizes he can’t tell, because his own eyes are cloudy with emotion. One more kiss and then he presses his forehead to hers, letting her whispered “Yes” wash over him like a cleansing wave, a baptism.

“I don’t have a ring,” he admits. “The other one, I left it behind. I think…I think I’d rather get a new one, if that’s okay with you.”

“I don’t care,” she laughs, with a little shake of her head, holding up her injured wrist. “It’s not like I could wear it anyway, right now.”

He takes her left hand in both of his, carefully, pressing a smiling kiss to the top of each finger, lingering on the ring until he’s interrupted by the sound of the sommelier clearing his throat in front of them.

“Mr. Queen! I wasn’t sure we’d ever get to open this beauty,” the man presses through the obvious intrusion, holding out the bottle in his hands for appraisal. “I guess the timing’s finally right, huh?”

He waggles his eyebrows in Felicity’s direction, but she’s too occupied gaping at the label to notice. Then she turns her wide eyes back to him.

“Is that the…”

“Yes.” Oliver just nods, trying to think back to four years ago, when he was just The Hood, and she was the I.T. girl who helped him with a suspicious smile. It seems like a few lifetimes ago, the years since have molded them into new people entirely. But what’s more, what’s most important, is that they’ve brought them together. “I’m trying to keep all my promises.”

The steward pours them each a glass before he turns to leave and for the rest of his life, Oliver will swear that it’s the best wine he’s ever had. But he’ll be lying, because he doesn’t remember the taste at all, doesn’t remember what they ate that night, doesn’t remember anything other than the way her eyes had sparkled, the way her voice sounded when she told him she wanted to be his wife.

“Oliver, can I ask you something?” Suddenly, she looks nervous, and he can’t figure out why.

“Anything.” The weight of the world isn’t completely off his shoulders, but for now, maybe for the rest of his life, it’s entirely bearable.

“When…when did you make this reservation?”

“The day before he took you.”


End file.
